Major Update: New Features and Incoming Content

The following first appeared as a November 2019 newsletter for the Feldenkrais Project email list. You can subscribe right here.

New lessons and learning for all, and improvements to donor “thank you” benefits. Plus, additional exclusive lessons for Patron-level donors!

As the USA heads toward our Thanksgiving holiday I’d like to take a moment to say thank you to our wonderful listener and donor community, and share some specific details about exciting new lessons and features your generous donations are funding, now and in the near future.

You may have caught the line in our recent video: the Feldenkrais Project is 100% powered by old-fashioned gratitude and generosity!

I designed the Feldenkrais Project to be a leading example of the kind of website I think we all want to use:

• We offer freely, to all our visitors, a large collection of life-changing educational content, with no strings attached and no advertisements.
• Then we simply and gently ask our listeners to support the Feldenkrais Project by sharing it, advocating for our vision, and donating when possible.
• In gratitude we offer additional content and features to our donors, and we expand these resources as funding increases.

I’m so grateful to be able to report that our beautiful funding model is working! Because of your support and engagement, our website is changing and growing.

In the same way a Feldenkrais lesson refines and expands our abilities, we’re carefully listening to user feedback, imagining the possibilities, and gently experimenting our way into significant long-term improvements.

I hope you enjoy all the good news below! Thanks for making the Feldenkrais Project possible, and helping it grow.

In gratitude,

– Nick Stauss-Klein

Here are the improvements listener donations are currently funding, as I spend my own time and pay professionals for the help I need to make our website even better.

You asked, we’re listening! More content for everyone:

• All our listeners will soon be able to enjoy a much-requested new addition to our primary lesson collection. I’m about to publish our first lesson specifically designed to improve the comfort and function of the jaw. Stay tuned next week!
• My newsletters that feature lessons and related educational articles I’ve written are now permanently available (and searchable and shareable!) on our website. Check out our Lessons and Learning Blog under the Lessons menu for popular topics like what to do with pain during a lesson, and how to improve your skeletal awareness.
• Similarly you can now find all the Project update newsletters (like this one) linked in Project Updates Blog, under the Project menu. I’m proud of what the Feldenkrais Project community has created and I want everyone to know what listener financial support is currently funding!

And I’m particularly excited about this next one:

• I am working hard right now preparing, teaching, and editing 30-minute lessons!

This initiative is a response to one of the most common requests I receive from listeners. It’s great to explore a full-length Feldenkrais class recording whenever you can, but I know that time is often tight, and we can learn something valuable in shorter study sessions (here’s an article I wrote about that, now filed in the Lessons and Learning Blog!).

In the next few months, as time and donations make it possible, I’ll be publishing a new collection of short talks and lessons for newcomers, which will also be great “tune-ups” for longtime Feldies.

Creating a whole new collection is very time-intensive work and I’m exploring the idea of a “membership drive” to help get this new content project over the finish line. Please comment below and let me know if you have any thoughts or feelings about that!

New features for all donors (Member-level and Patron-level):

• Check out the new donor navigation bar at the top of every page of FeldenkraisProject.com! It provides easier access to logging in and to your donor “thank you” benefits, and tells you about your Member-level or Patron-level access (including how long your donor benefits will last).
• There’s also better menu flow. Click Donor Benefits in the menu for easy access to whatever you’re looking for.
  More help and info is available if you lost your password.
• Our Related Lessons system of cross-referencing and searching for lessons is improving, based on listener comments, new lessons added, and my own further studies. Just click the Related Lessons tab below every lesson’s audio player, or try our advanced search and sort in the Donor Benefits, For All Donors menu.

New content for our Patron-level donors:

• “Early access” versions of the new short talks and lessons will begin to roll out to you in a few weeks! You’ll get to try out and comment on these lessons months before they make it to the public collection. I’ll be very interested in your feedback as I plan out the content and order of the new collection!
• Additional short lessons, permanently for Patrons, are coming soon as I migrate our video lesson content into easier-to-access regular audio lessons (here’s why I’m doing that). This process is a bit time-consuming but I’m hoping to get it done this month or next. The first one is already complete: check out Lengthening the Arms, Freeing the Scapulas (35 minutes).
• Thanks to your generous donations I’ve been able to add additional lessons exclusively for Patrons at a great rate! Anyone who donates to the Feldenkrais Project at the Patron level has immediate, exclusive access to 10 of my favorite recent lessons. Since I know many Feldenkrais Project Patrons are passionate Felden-fans, these are often sophisticated, powerful lessons, frequently more advanced than lessons in the public collection.

And I’m pleased to report that thanks to your generous donations I’ve been keeping pace with my plan to add at least 16 new lessons for Patrons per year (12 regular audio lessons and 4 more audio lessons extracted from our quarterly Patrons live video conference recordings).

Being a Patron-level donor is becoming more and more valuable as our “thank you” resource grows every month! And, your donations are more valuable to the Feldenkrais Project too: as our efforts to share Feldenkrais expand, so does our need for funding.

Thanks your participation in the Feldenkrais Project!

I’m so grateful that all our listeners and donors help us spread the life-changing benefits of Feldenkrais study as widely as possible!

– Nick